Studies of turnout as a ‘habit’ seem to overestimate the significance of self-perpetuation of electoral participation

Electoral participation is frequently discussed as a ‘habit’ formed during a citizen’s young adulthood but there is debate over how this develops. In a recent study, Maciej A. Górecki explored the mechanism that lies behind the process of ‘habit formation’. His findings challenge ideas that voting habits are shaped by early experience of participating in elections, and instead support theories that they are more closely associated with ‘social maturation’

Volume 19 (1) 2013

The modeling of ion-transport through biological membranes is important for understanding many life processes. The transmembrane potential and ion concentrations in the stationary state can be measured in in-vivo experiments. They can also be simulated within membrane models. Here we consider a basic model of ion transport that describes the time evolution of ion concentrations and potentials through a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. To reduce the computation time I have developed an application for simulation of the ion-flows through a membrane starting from an ensemble of initial conditions, optimized for a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). The application has been designed for the CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) technology. It is written in CUDA C programming language and runs on NVIDIA TESLA family of numerical accelerators. The calculation speed can be increased almost 1000 times compared with a sequential program running on the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a typical PC.Pozna

Polish elections demonstrate the limitations of gender quotas as a tool for increasing female representation

Gender quotas, under which a party is obliged to include a certain number of female candidates on electoral lists, have been put forward as a method for increasing the representation of women in national parliaments. Maciej A. Górecki and Paula Kukołowicz write on the use of gender quotas in Polish elections. They highlight that while quotas have greatly increased the number of female candidates standing in elections, they have not produced a similar rise in the number of women entering parliament. They argue that this may be the result of quotas tightening the competition for female candidates who appeal to the same sections of the electorate

On polymorphic logical gates in sub-excitable chemical medium

In a sub-excitable light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical medium an asymmetric disturbance causes the formation of localized traveling wave-fragments. Under the right conditions these wave-fragment can conserve their shape and velocity vectors for extended time periods. The size and life span of a fragment depend on the illumination level of the medium. When two or more wave-fragments collide they annihilate or merge into a new wave-fragment. In computer simulations based on the Oregonator model we demonstrate that the outcomes of inter-fragment collisions can be controlled by varying the illumination level applied to the medium. We interpret these wave-fragments as values of Boolean variables and design collision-based polymorphic logical gates. The gate implements operation XNOR for low illumination, and it acts as NOR gate for high illumination. As a NOR gate is a universal gate then we are able to demonstrate that a simulated light sensitive BZ medium exhibits computational universality

How to convince players in construction market? Strategies for effective implementation of circular economy in construction sector

Excessive and progressive industrialization is creating significant economic gaps, whereas large quantities of natural resources are used, and a lot of waste is created. Circular Economy (CE) aims to convert the so-called linear economy paradigm. Changes in legal regulations, business models, and construction methods are necessary for an effective CE implementation. This article aims to attract the attention of key players of the construction sector to a phenomenon of the CE. Basic conditions, a company should meet to perform an effective transformation towards the CE, were described. A hybrid, qualitative-quantitative methodology was used to research. First, a literature review is performed to describe a specificity of the construction industry and features of the construction companies in Poland. Second, a conceptual framework is developed to describe emerging CE business models. Third, a simulation-based analysis is developed to check a propensity of the construction companies to implement the CE and enhance its meaning in different types of economiesThis work was supported by the Statutory research for scientists at the UTP University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Architecture under Grant No. BSM-61/2018

Algorithms: simultaneous error-correction and rooting for gene tree reconciliation and the gene duplication problem

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Evolutionary methods are increasingly challenged by the wealth of fast growing resources of genomic sequence information. Evolutionary events, like gene duplication, loss, and deep coalescence, account more then ever for incongruence between gene trees and the actual species tree. Gene tree reconciliation is addressing this fundamental problem by invoking the minimum number of gene duplication and losses that reconcile a rooted gene tree with a rooted species tree. However, the reconciliation process is highly sensitive to topological error or wrong rooting of the gene tree, a condition that is not met by most gene trees in practice. Thus, despite the promises of gene tree reconciliation, its applicability in practice is severely limited.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We introduce the problem of reconciling unrooted and erroneous gene trees by simultaneously rooting and error-correcting them, and describe an efficient algorithm for this problem. Moreover, we introduce an error-corrected version of the gene duplication problem, a standard application of gene tree reconciliation. We introduce an effective heuristic for our error-corrected version of the gene duplication problem, given that the original version of this problem is NP-hard. Our experimental results suggest that our error-correcting approaches for unrooted input trees can significantly improve on the accuracy of gene tree reconciliation, and the species tree inference under the gene duplication problem. Furthermore, the efficiency of our algorithm for error-correcting reconciliation is capable of handling truly large-scale phylogenetic studies.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our presented error-correction approach is a crucial step towards making gene tree reconciliation more robust, and thus to improve on the accuracy of applications that fundamentally rely on gene tree reconciliation, like the inference of gene-duplication supertrees.</p

Time series classification with ensembles of elastic distance measures

Several alternative distance measures for comparing time series have recently been proposed and evaluated on time series classification (TSC) problems. These include variants of dynamic time warping (DTW), such as weighted and derivative DTW, and edit distance-based measures, including longest common subsequence, edit distance with real penalty, time warp with edit, and move–split–merge. These measures have the common characteristic that they operate in the time domain and compensate for potential localised misalignment through some elastic adjustment. Our aim is to experimentally test two hypotheses related to these distance measures. Firstly, we test whether there is any significant difference in accuracy for TSC problems between nearest neighbour classifiers using these distance measures. Secondly, we test whether combining these elastic distance measures through simple ensemble schemes gives significantly better accuracy. We test these hypotheses by carrying out one of the largest experimental studies ever conducted into time series classification. Our first key finding is that there is no significant difference between the elastic distance measures in terms of classification accuracy on our data sets. Our second finding, and the major contribution of this work, is to define an ensemble classifier that significantly outperforms the individual classifiers. We also demonstrate that the ensemble is more accurate than approaches not based in the time domain. Nearly all TSC papers in the data mining literature cite DTW (with warping window set through cross validation) as the benchmark for comparison. We believe that our ensemble is the first ever classifier to significantly outperform DTW and as such raises the bar for future work in this area

Behaviour of domestic rabbits during 2 weeks after weaning

Thirty three rabbits from five litters that were weaned at the age of 5 weeks were observed. The animals were kept in pens that were enriched with an elevation made of bricks. In total, 150&thinsp;h of observations made at feeding time (07:30–10:00 and 18:00–20:30&thinsp;LT, local time) were analysed. A number of affiliative, exploratory, comfort, eating, resting and locomotor behaviours were observed. Agonistic behaviour was not observed. Rabbits showed companion and location preferences: 56&thinsp;% of animals had a preferred companion, and 84&thinsp;% preferred a particular place in the pen. Significant effects of group size and time of day on the frequency of some forms of behaviour were found, e.g. rabbits performed comfort behaviours more often in the morning. Sex did not influence the rabbits' behaviour. Correlations were also found between different forms of behaviour, e.g. animals that performed more exploratory behaviours also showed more locomotor behaviours and affiliative interactions.</p

Novel Potent Muscarinic Receptor Antagonists: Investigation on the Nature of Lipophilic Substituents in the 5- and/or 6-Positions of the 1,4-Dioxane Nucleus

A series of novel 1,4-dioxane analogues of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR) antagonist 2 was synthesized and studied for their affinity at M1-M5 mAChRs. The 6-cyclohexyl-6-phenyl derivative 3b, with a cis configuration between the CH2N+(CH3)3 chain in the 2-position and the cyclohexyl moiety in the 6-position, showed pKi values for mAChRs higher than those of 2 and a selectivity profile analogous to that of the clinically approved drug oxybutynin. The study of the enantiomers of 3b and the corresponding tertiary amine 33b revealed that the eutomers are (2S,6S)-(-)-3b and (2S,6S)-(-)-33b, respectively. Docking simulations on the M3 mAChR-resolved structure rationalized the experimental observations. The quaternary ammonium function, which should prevent the crossing of the blood-brain barrier, and the high M3/M2 selectivity, which might limit cardiovascular side effects, make 3b a valuable starting point for the design of novel antagonists potentially useful in peripheral diseases in which M3 receptors are involved